Court suspends Uber lawsuit

January 04, 2018 | 11:23
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The Ho Chi Minh City People’s Court has decided to suspend Uber B.V’s lawsuit against the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Taxation due to a lack of legal standing.
Uber Vietnam has no legal standing to file a lawsuit on behalf of Uber B.V

Tran Ngoc Tam, director of the tax department, told Tuoitre that according to the court’s decision, Uber Vietnam JSC—the petitioner in the lawsuit—does not have legal standing, thus, the city court decided to suspend the lawsuit.

Notably, on December 20, Chu Xuan Binh, the legal representative of Uber Vietnam JSC, signed and stamped the petition to send to the court. However, according to the certificated proxy published on January 7, 2016, there is no content showing that Uber B.V authorised Uber Vietnam to raise lawsuits.

The court also added that Uber B.V, instead of Uber Vietnam, still has the right to turn to the court and press the lawsuit. Besides, Uber B.V can also appeal within seven days of receiving the court’s decision.

Along with the decision to suspend the lawsuit, the court allowed the tax department to continue to enforce payments from Uber B.V.

“With this decision, the tax department will resume the enforcement of payments until it recovers the VND53 billion ($2.33 million) in missed tax arrears,” the director of the tax department stated.

Previously, by the December 23 deadline, Uber only paid VND13.3 billion ($585,665) of the VND66.68 billion ($2.94 million) of tax arrears, thus the department decided to take enforcement measures.

Accordingly, the tax department requested five banks—Vietcombank, Eximbank, Sacombank, ACB, and VietinBank—to facilitate enforcement. Notably, the fares paid to Uber via bank account would be sent to the tax department’s account instead of being transferred to Uber International Holding B.V. The duration of the coercion would have lasted for ten days.

After receiving the tax department’s decision to take measures to recover its tax arrears, Uber officially took the department to court.

As a result, on December 29, the Ho Chi Minh City People’s Court, after considering Uber’s petition, asked the tax department to suspend enforcement measures until the final judgment of the court.

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By By Ha Vy

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